


The Sound of Silence

by unorigelnal (jayburding)



Series: The Sound of Silence [1]
Category: Thor (2011)
Genre: Child Death, Gen, Mild Gore, Stillbirth, Triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-19
Updated: 2012-04-19
Packaged: 2017-11-03 22:55:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/386898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jayburding/pseuds/unorigelnal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the prompt: "Loki, alone in a forest, birthing a stillborn babe."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sound of Silence

His little girl was never very lively, not like her brother, kicking him with all eight feet as soon as he knew how. He treasured her soft movements for their rarity.

She stayed small, and at first he was relieved. She was a secret, his secret. Loki wouldn’t have her taken from him like Sleipnir was, tamed to his father’s hand like a common animal. He didn’t even know what form she would take yet. With her father’s wealth of shapes, she could be anything she wanted, or everything if she truly took after him.

Six months and she was no bigger, barely a swell under his skin. He worried but didn’t dare ask for help: his father’s stormy expression loomed in his mind, too immediate to let him consider. He struggled to sleep, unnerved by how quiet she was, and found himself sneaking into the stables when his fears would not subside.

Sleipnir was delighted to see him, but his excited whinnying quickly subsided when Loki failed to smile for him. He lipped at Loki’s hands where they twisted in the fabric of his tunic, nudging his stomach. Loki sobbed when he felt his tiny daughter stir.

“Contrary,” he mumbled, stifling his tears in Sleipnir’s mane when his son laid his dark head on Loki’s shoulder. “Of course she is. She’s my daughter.” Sleipnir huffed, though exactly what opinion he was voicing on the matter, Loki couldn’t be sure.

In the end, Loki stayed, leaning against his son’s broad side, and fell asleep to soft whickering and his daughter’s muted response. Sleipnir woke him while the sky was still grey and urged him out before he could get caught. He crept back again the following night, and the night after and so on, delighting in his daughter’s reactions, even if the stubborn child only reacted to her older brother.

Eventually, he had to stop. He still visited- he would never leave Sleipnir alone to the fools who thought he was just a horse- but his nights were spent in his own room, however fitful his sleep was there. Time had given his daughter some weight, though she was still worryingly small to be so close to term. Loki preferred to believe she had settled her form early, and chosen small. Maybe a kitten: it would match her wilful nature.

At eight months, she went silent. Nothing could rouse her, not even the velvet touch of Sleipnir’s nose against his- so small, too small- stomach. His son’s concern only made Loki’s worse, until every night he clawed his way out of dissipating nightmares and wept at the feeling of nothing.

Three days he tried to ask for help. Three days he lost his nerve. On the last his mother caught him at the door to the healing rooms, and he lied through his teeth and his tears until he could escape her presence. He knew she hadn’t believed him- Frigga could catch him in a lie like no other- and the fear that she would tell Odin and it would all come out was enough to convince him to run.

Loki’s frantic quest for solitude led him to the forests on the edge of the world. He hadn’t felt his daughter move for a week. Begging didn’t move her any more than threats did. A truth took hideous shape in the back of his mind, but he could not, would not acknowledge it.

He couldn’t change, constrained by his terror that she would just disappear in the process of transformation. Later, he would blame hormones and lack of sleep and sheer blind panic for what he did next. With no physical way to birth her in his male form, and too scared to change and risk losing her, Loki had given himself no choice.

Loki cut her out.

The pain made him retch, the hideous sloppy feel of his flesh parting sending a shudder through him that shook everything but the hand that held the knife. It didn’t waver once as he gutted himself, even when the blood spilled over his hands, steaming in the cold air.

He delivered her with hands slippery with his own blood, forcing the wound shut with a touch of magic as clumsy as cauterisation.

She didn’t cry. The cord around her neck made it impossible to do so.


End file.
